108 NEW REFLECTIONS ON THE REVOLUTION OF OUR TIME pethaps as ‘indestructible’, ‘indivisible’ ‘small, ‘round’, ete. All these are ‘universals, or thoughts. ‘Atom’ itself is a concept. Hence even out of this ‘materialism proceeds idealism. ‘Where, in all this, does Marx fic in? The answer cannot be unambi- {guous, In a sense, Marx clearly remains within the idealist field — chat is to say, within the ultimate affirmation of the rationality of the real. The well-known inversion of dialectics cannot but reproduce che latter's structure. To affirm that the ultimate law of motion of history is given not by che change of ideas in the minds of human beings but rather by the contradiction, in each stage, between the development of productive forces and the existing relations of production, does not modify things at all. For what is idealist is not the affirmation that the law of motion of history is the one rather than the other, but the very idea thac there is an ultimate law of motion that can be conceptually grasped. To affirm the ‘transparency of the real to the concept is equivalent to affirming that the real is ‘form. For this reason the most determinist tendencies within. Marxism are also the most idealist, since they have to base their analyses and predictions on inexorable laws which are not immediately legible in the surface of historical life; they must base themselves on the internal logic of a closed concepttal model and transform that model into che (conceptual) essence of the real. 3. This is not, however, che whole story. Ina sense which we have to define more precisely, there is in Marx a definite movement away from idealism, But before we discuss chi, we must characterize the structure and implications of any move away from idealism. As we have said, the essence of idealism is the reduction of the real to the concepe (the affir~ mation of the rationality of the real or, in the terms of ancient philos- ophy, the affirmation that the reality of an object — as distinct from its ‘existence — is form), This idealism can adopt the structure which we find in Plato and “Aristotle — the reduction of che real to a hierarchical universe of static essences; or one can introduce movement into it, as Hegel does — on condition, of course, that it is movement of the concept and thus remains entirely within the realm of form. However, this clearly indicates thac any move away from idealism cannot but systemat- ically weaken the claims of form to exhaust che reality of the object (i. the claims of what Heidegger and Derrida have called the ‘metaphysics of presence’). Bat, this weakening cannot merely involve an affirmation of the thing’s existence outside thought, since this ‘realism’ is peefecely ‘compatible with idealism in our second sense. As has been pointed out, POST-MARXISM WITHOUT APOLOGIES 109 ‘whats significane from a deconstructve viewpointis that the sensible ching, even in a ‘east’ like Aristotle, is itself unchinkable except in relation to intelligible form. Hence, the erucial boundary for Aristode, and for philos- ‘ophy generally, does not pass between thought and ching but within each of these, between form and formesnes or indfiniteness!® The Instability of Objects Thus, it is not possible to abandon idealism by a simple appeal co the external object, since (1) chis is compatible with the affirmation that the object is form and thus remains within the field of idealism and che most traditional metaphysics, and (2) if we take refuge in the object’s mere ‘existence’, in the ‘it’ beyond all predication, we cannot say anything about it But here another possibility opens up at once. We have seen that the ‘being’ of objects is different from their mete existence, and that objects are never given as mere ‘existences’ but are always articulated within discursive cotalties. But in that case it is enough to show that no discursive totality is absolutely self-contained — that there will always be ‘an outside which distorts it and prevents it from fully consticuting itself — to see that the form and essence of objects are penetrated by a basic instability and precariousness, and that this is their most esental possibilty. This is exactly the point at which the movement away from idealism Let us consider the problem more closely. Both Witrgenstein and Saussure broke with what can be called a referential theory of meaning — ile. the idea that language is a nomenclature which is in a one-to-one relation to objects. They showed that the word ‘father’, for instance, only ‘means what it does because the words ‘mother, ‘son’, ete, also exist. The totality of language is, cherefore, a system of differences in which the identity of the elements is purely relational. Hence, every individual act of signification involves the totality of language (in Derridean terms, the presence of something always has the traces of something else which is absent). This purely relational or differential character is not, of course, ‘exclusive to linguistic identities bue holds for all signifying structures — that is to say, forall social structures. This does not mean that is language in the restricted sense of speech or writing but rather that the relational or differential structure of language is the same for all signi- structures. So, if all identity is differential, ic is enough that the a of diferences is noe closed, chat ie sues the ation of external